Taglines: Trouble by the hour.
Bad Therapy Movie Storyline. The dark comedy “Bad Therapy,” about a married couple that becomes prey for a disturbed and manipulative therapist, contains so many promising elements that it’s a shame that it never figures out how to mold them into a satisfying shape.
Directed by William Teitler, and adapted by Nancy Doyne from her same-titled novel, this all-star indie film is a mishmash of genres that never finds any meaningful through-line in terms of tone, theme, world view, or, well, anything. A scene of genial, low-stakes martial discord of the sort you’d expect to see on a mediocre Netflix series will be followed by a scene of broad comic hijinks, then by a scene of sexual menace, then more hijinks, then a scene of sudden, shocking violence, then back again to mediocre Netflix married-people-problems, and so on.
Alicia Silverstone stars as Susan Howard, a real estate agent with a daughter from a previous marriage, the precocious Louise (Anna Pniowsky). She shares a cute Los Angeles bungalow with her husband, Nature Channel producer Bob Howard (Rob Corddry). When Susan’s best friend Roxy (Aisha Tyler) reveals that she’s pregnant with triplets, it unleashes a flood of anxiety over unresolved tensions with Bob, and the two agree to enter marriage counseling with the same therapist who treated Roxy and her husband.
Unfortunately, the therapist, Judy Small (Michaela Watkins), is an unhinged manipulator who unscrews the tops of the Howards’ skulls and roots around in their subconscious minds, looking for buttons to smash. Judy persuades Susan and Bob to start seeing her individually, never as a couple. She fills their imagination with doubts, lies, and cues that set off their self-destructive tendencies as well as their inclinations to distrust their mate.
Why is Judy such bad news? She has her reasons. But the film takes its sweet time getting around to exploring them. And once they’re revealed, the character becomes less intriguing than when she was a mysterious chaos agent, because plausible psychology is not something this film is terribly interested in—nor should it be; lots of movies make no sense that way, yet still manage to thrill, amuse, and surprise. But this is not one of them. “Bad Therapy” is just realistic enough in its handling of the characters to make the scenes of psychological and sexual manipulation and violence feel contrived, superficial, and shoehorned in, lacking power to disturb, or even divert.
The cast is so appealing and talented that they’ll make you temporarily forget that the film isn’t good. Corddry doesn’t have the magnetism to sell scenes where we’re expected to believe that Bob is catnip to gorgeous women; but he plays distressed vulnerability well, and he’s an attentive and intelligent counterpart for Silverstone, whose free-form vocalizations invest even the most tedious expository lines with an element of surprise. Watkins gives more to Judy than the film does; the script tips its hand early by having the therapist go full cuckoo, to the point where it’s hard to accept that two reasonably intelligent, functioning adults would continue to see her for long.
Bad Therapy (2020)
Directed by: William Teitler
Starring: Alicia Silverstone, Rob Corddry, Michaela Watkins, Haley Joel Osment, Aisha Tyler, Sarah Shahi, David Paymer, Dichen Lachman, Ginger Gonzaga, Flula Borg, Anna Pniowsky
Screenplay by: Nancy Doyne
Production Design by: Alison Sadler
Cinematography by: Rob Givens
Film Editing by: David Leonard
Costume Design by: Aggie Guerard Rodgers
Music by: Nathan Larson
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Gravitas Ventures
Release Date: April 17, 2020
Visits: 34
